Drifting Buoys, RMRP 1996



Drifting Buoy Information:

Four satellite tracked drifting buoys were deployed between 10-13 May 1996 by the RV Argo Maine. One buoy (ptt 18213) was picked up by a fishing vessel near Rockland in early June 1996 and was subsequently redeployed on 4 August at 43° 34.3´N, 067° 39.54´W. The fifth drifting buoy was deployed on 6 August. All five had drogues at a depth of 40 meters. The drifting buoys transmitted via Service Argos on a limited duty cycle and between 1-3 positions were received daily for most of the buoys. The table below lists the deployment positions along with the date and position of the last transmission.

Data Processing:

The positions calculated by Service Argos were edited using a default speed criterion of 6 knots, eliminating unrealistic positons. The cleaned time series were fit by a cubic spline and interpolated to hourly positions. The hourly positions were low-pass filtered to remove any tidal effects.

Data Display:

The smoothed position time series are shown for each buoy. The symbols on the plots are every seven days, starting from 02 May 1994 at 0000z. Labels indicating the date are placed every four weeks.


PTTDrogue DepthDate DeployedLatitudeLongitudeLast DateLatitudeLongitude
1821240 m08 Aug 199644° 16.0´N67° 27.1´W09 Apr 199740° 57.4´N69° 37.9´W
1821340 m11 May 199644° 27.9´N67° 17.0´W12 Apr 199744° 12.0´N45° 48.9´W
1821440 m13 May 199642° 55.0´N67° 14.1´W30 Mar 199739° 56.6´N68° 22.1´W
1821540 m10 May 199643° 56.7´N67° 30.2´W13 Apr 199731° 58.1´N55° 31.9´W
1821640 m11 May 199643° 32.9´N67° 40.0´W15 Apr 199732° 00.4´N44° 05.2´W